Thousands more pages of emails from his time as Oklahoma’s attorney general, released earlier this year after the Center for Media and Democracy sued for them to be made public, detailed an often-chummy relationship between Pruitt’s office and Devon Energy, a major oil and gas exploration and production company based in Oklahoma City.
Research Cited
State AG, Press Association Team Up for Open Records/Open Meetings Seminars
The meetings were last hosted in 2014 and drew more than 600 attendees from state and local offices, school boards, public officials and residents. Hunter’s renewal of the meetings comes on the heels of his predecessor Scott Pruitt, now head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who was often the subject of open records requests himself. In fact, prior to being sworn in as President Donald Trump’s pick to head the agency, the Center for Media and Democracy filed nine open records requests with the AG’s office beginning in January 2015.
Protect the Privacy of Cross-Border Data: Stop the DOJ Bill
In 2016 and again in 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed legislation that would empower the U.S. executive branch to enter bilateral surveillance agreements with foreign nations. Under these agreements, police in both nations would have the reciprocal power to bypass [Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties]—and each other’s privacy laws—and instead make direct demands to service providers for data located in the other nation.
EFF and a coalition of 20 other privacy advocates sent a letter to Congress opposing this DOJ bill. The other signatories are Access Now, Advocacy for Principled Action in Government, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Center for Media and Democracy, the Constitutional Alliance, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Defending Rights & Dissent, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, the Government Accountability Project, Government Information Watch, Human Rights Watch, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Security Counselors, New America’s Open Technology Institute, the Project on Government Oversight, and Restore the Fourth.
Don’t Let These Other Stories Get Lost in the News
Farr also has fought vigorously against workers’ efforts to unionize. He was a staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which has deep ties to the Koch brothers and was described by The Center for Media and Democracy as “a national leader in the effort to destroy public and private sector unions.”
Think Tanks Affiliated with ALEC Work to Crush Public Unions
According to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), a national corporate watchdog organization, the SPN is currently working to weaken the unions that represent first responders who are helping Houston residents get back on their feet after Hurricane Harvey:
Sanders’s Bill Electrifies Growing Single-Payer Movement
One such group is the Koch-funded State Policy Network, which the Center for Media and Democracy describes as an “$83 million right-wing empire.” The State Policy Network has organizations in nearly every state that can react quickly — and with resources — to counter any policy they don’t like across the country. Other opponents, such as the American Medical Association, Third Way Democrats and right-wing think tanks and media, will also be militant in their opposition to the single-payer bill.
AFJ Nominee Report: Thomas Farr
Farr also has fought vigorously against workers’ efforts to unionize. He was a staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which has deep ties to the Koch brothers and was described by The Center for Media and Democracy as “a national leader in the effort to destroy public and private sector unions.”2 Later, in private practice, he filed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit challenging California’s State Employer-Employee Relations Act, which provided for collective bargaining for state employees. He did this even though he was a North Carolina resident and was not representing any party to the litigation. He also defended companies trying to deny recognition of unions and committing unfair labor practices.
Pruitt Declined to Prosecute Fraud Allegations as Okla. AG
Arn Pearson, who is suing Hunter’s office for records from Pruitt’s tenure, said officials should be able to release the audit with sensitive material blacked out.
“I’m very skeptical about how they’re using claims and exemptions to withhold records,” said Pearson, who is general counsel for the Center for Media and Democracy.
Who Exactly Is Paying for Neil Gorsuch to Speak at the Trump Tower This Month?
TFAS is an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN). According to a 2013 report from the Center for Media and Democracy, the SPN is a “a web of right-wing ‘think tanks’ in every state across the country.” The report goes on to claim that although “many of SPN’s member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent … SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing, ALEC-backed agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders, all while reporting little or no lobbying activities.”
Letter: Climate Deniers Against Electric Vehicles
My suspicions were confirmed when I checked the Center for Media and Democracy’s website and found that the Heartland Institute is a right-wing libertarian think tank and and according to The Economist is one of the most active “climate denier” organizations in the U.S. which receives the bulk of its funding from the petroleum industry, the Koch brothers and other climate change denier groups. In essence the arguments put forth by Burnett are just reformatted and regurgitated arguments that argue that climate change isn’t real and that we don’t need to worry about it.